The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has a plan for Rockhill area residents affected by drinking water contamination. And those residents had more than a few thoughts about the plan during a public hearing held by the DEP at the West Rockhill Township building Wednesday night.
“It’s just insufficient,” said Gerry Moyer, a Tabor Road resident. Last year, Moyer’s well was one of 12 in the area found to be contaminated by perfluorinated chemicals above a safety level put forth by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Moyer was joined by about 50 other attendees at the meeting, which was an opportunity for residents to officially comment on a plan the DEP released this spring. The department plans to spend $96,000 to install carbon filtration systems on affected homes and maintain them for one year.
The DEP chose that option over two others: continuing to provide bottled water to the homes or hooking all private well owners in the area up to the closest public water system, which it estimated would cost about $5 million.
Ragesh Patel, a program manager for environmental cleanup with the DEP, said the public water option was not cost effective and that his budget was capped at $2 million. The high cost of the public water alternative is due to the DEP’s preference for connecting not only the twelve homes to public water, but about 140 more homes spread miles apart across the border of East and West Rockhill townships. Only putting the 12 highly contaminated wells on the public system could cause the chemicals to shift to other locations and contaminate other wells, Patel argued.
“We need to be inclusive of all the people at this point,” he said.
That didn’t sit well with several residents who would receive the carbon filters. Several expressed concerns about the ongoing cost of maintaining the filtration systems after one year, which the DEP estimates at about $1,350 every three to five years. The filters would also require the homeowner to put a covenant on their deeds notifying potential buyers of the contamination and the need to continue using the filters.